Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Key players in the mobile industry in Pakistan are collaborating to host a two-day Mobile Money Hackathon in Karachi on Saturday 7 – Sunday 8 October. Telenor Microfinance Bank and JazzCash, together with the GSMA, will host companies and developers in the financial services industry, including banks, aggregators, payments switches, start-ups, fintech companies and established players, for the weekend challenge of testing and building solutions for harmonised API use cases. The hackathon is taking place at DotZero, Karachi’s community space for technology entrepreneurs and start-ups. Karandaaz Pakistan, a development organization promoting access to finance for small businesses through commercially directed investments and financial inclusion for individuals by employing technology-enabled digital solutions, is additionally sponsoring the event.

This hackathon is part of a series that will take place in Africa, Asia and Latin America over the next two years, with the purpose of increasing awareness, demand, and implementation of the mobile money industry API.

The API specifications have been jointly designed by key industry stakeholders—mobile money providers, platform vendors, third party service providers and industry partners — combining best practices in the technology industry, with the aim of reducing integration time and complexity within the mobile money industry today, and to limit and avoid fragmentation in the mobile money ecosystem. The APIs will be implemented across the mobile money industry with other operators in Asia and beyond. The GSMA Mobile Money API has been implemented on the JazzCash and Telenor Bank platforms for the hackathon.

The Mobile Money Hackathon is the first of its kind to be hosted in South Asia and follows the success of the first two hackathons held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The hackathon is structured to solve two challenges – merchant payments and bill payments. The participating teams will innovate and build solutions for either one of the two challenges, with the first place team winning two expenses-paid tickets to Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest gathering for the mobile industry, in February 2018.

Pakistan has seen rich innovation in mobile financial services in recent years, and with useful APIs across the industry, the foundation is established for further growth and diversity in the industry.

Sharing his thoughts, Shahid Mustafa, President & CEO of Telenor Microfinance Bank, said: “We are happy to collaborate with the GSMA and other financial sector players to bring the new instalment of global Hackathon series to Pakistan. With high level of Telecom penetration coupled with low banking sector use, Pakistan offers a great opportunity to innovators, looking to use fintech to enhance banking/financial services use”.

Aniqa Afzal Sandhu, Chief Digital Officer – Jazz, stated, “JazzCash’s goal from day one has been to bridge the prevalent banking divide in the country. One key part of this is promotion of innovation through working with private partners in the mobile money ecosystem and global bodies like the GSMA. And focusing on harmonized APIs allows us to utilize best solutions from around the globe in designing viable, advanced and secure offerings for customers in a digital age.”